Sunset over Hidden Temple
by Kay Taylor
Summary: The Death Eater trials; Evan Rosier consults his lawyer.


He's sitting there, calm and unruffled. Metaphorically, of course; in real terms he's a mess, dirty hair and rolled-up sleeves. He sits there and steeples his fingers, and looks at me with those piercing green eyes. Not a single sign of fear.   
  
Did you even HEAR me? I ask, exasperated.  
  
He smiles slightly, and nods. The look on his face is carefully impassive – gods, he'd make a fine poker player.   
  
They have enough evidence to send you to Azkaban. I lean back in my chair, wondering if that will provoke much of a reaction.   
  
It doesn't. Unless you count a raised eyebrow.  
  
Silence.  
  
There's nothing I can do, I insist, wondering if he mistakenly believes my plea of mitigation will keep him from the Dementors.   
  
Four witnesses named you, all under Veritaserum. I look down at my notes. You had blood all over your cloak and your hands.  
  
Silence.  
  
And what did Lucius Malfoy say?  
  
I look up, startled. Rosier's impassive face is slightly more open now, and I can see a hard, glittering edge in his eyes.   
  
Oh, I know HE'S the star witness, Rosier spits. Lucius would do ANYTHING, bloody well ANYTHING, to save his precious skin. It's no use sitting there and pretending that he hasn't tried to bargain with our lives. He's already put Natasha in Azkaban for the rest of her fucking LIFE, and Lestrange will be next. He's breathing heavily, and his knuckles are white, clutching the arms of his chair. I swallow, feeling an intense radiance coming off him, a rippling in the air. And he'll throw Sev to the Dementors too he whispers, almost too low for me to hear.  
  
He's almost right. Lucius Malfoy is the Ministry's chief informant on the incident, after being cleared by a special tribunal. Acting under the Imperius curse, apparantly. Nothing to do with the fact that he's rich.  
  
And he HAS already condemned two people to inevitable death. Rosier just doesn't know that Lucius almost bit his own tongue off under Veritaserum. Refused to say a single word about Severus Snape, until the blood was running down his neck and pooling with a horrible, sickly dripping on the court-room floor. It'll be months before he can talk again.  
  
And now he's done for me, too, he says simply, settling back in the chair, almost as if he were pulling an invisible veil over his emotions, shrouding them in shadows. Hasn't he?  
  
I can't feel any sympathy for Rosier. Ten Muggles dead from blood loss. Two were children. One – a little girl – missing an eye.  
And whenever I find myself looking over the photos, as I do so often at nights, that's what haunts me the most. The missing eye.  
Looking at this calm, handsome man, I wonder where he put that eye. If it's in his pocket, even now. And things like this make me shiver, watching Rosier calmly offer me a glass of water – in my own office – and discuss his life imprisonment in Azkaban as if it were a holiday in Paris.  
  
Silence. Then he leans forward, producing something from his pocket, a thick roll of parchment sealed with lurid, blood-red wax. He hands it to me as if it were the most important thing in the world, only letting go when he's SURE I'm grasping it. Will you give this to Severus Snape. I know you're appearing for him as well.  
  
He looks away, briefly.   
  
Rosier says goodbye politely, walking through the door of my office for the last time, returning to his mansion to sit in the darkness and wait for the Auror's knock, the tell-tale hammering on the door at three in the morning. I wonder if there'll be anyone to sit and wait with him, to run their fingers through his rumpled hair and whisper such meaningless endearments and reassurances, as Lestrange must have done to his Bella the night before her trial.  
  
And, when he's gone, I break the seal, settling myself down on the window seat. From there, I can see the sun beginning to set over the Hidden Temple, the Court of Star Chamber. Rosier's letter to Severus is written in untidy, hurried handwriting, a sudden scrawl of ink rendering some words illegible.  
  
Half an hour later, I look up.  
  
And realise that despite it all, I'm crying.  
  
I think of Rosier, sitting calm and patient in his mansion, maybe picking out a tune on the dusty grand piano, waiting for his death sentence to be battered out against the door by Alastor Moody's fists. So calm, and so silent.  
  
And I hold all the emotions of his short life in my hands, spilled out on parchment to Severus, an aching and harsh declaration of breathless love. It's a letter from a dying man, one who'll be dead before dawn, and has only a few short hours to tell Severus that he was the world and the sky, the beginning and the end of all Rosier ever wanted.  
  
Dead before dawn, and I remember the way our hands touched as he handed me the parchment, the most important thing in his world; his love.  
  
Part of me hopes that he'll take at least one Auror down with him.  
  
I think of Severus, waiting in his cell to give testimony, to stand in the witness gallery and swear before the court that he acted for Dumbledore. He'll be cold tonight, huddled under his voluminous robes. Will he be thinking of Rosier? Maybe.  
  
I can't give him the letter. He might decide to join Rosier in his hopelessly romantic last gesture, to die fighting. It seems like something Severus would do, and we can't risk that. Dumbledore needs him alive and well, not buried in some unmarked grave in Azkaban.  
  
I reach for my wand, marveling at how steady my hands are.  
  
I whisper, and offer up a small prayer for forgiveness as Rosier's love letter disappears into a curling spiral of ashes.


End file.
